Searching for an Autoethnographic Ethic - 1st Edition

Visit the link below to download the full version of this book:

https://medipdf.com/product/searching-for-an-autoethnographic-ethic-1st-edition/

Click Download Now

Writing Lives
Ethnographic Narratives
Series Editors: Arthur P. Bochner, Carolyn Ellis (University of South
Florida) and Tony E. Adams (Northeastern Illinois University)

Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives publishes narrative representations of qualita-

tive research projects. The series editors seek manuscripts that blur the boundaries
between humanities and social sciences. We encourage novel and evocative forms
of expressing concrete lived experience, including autoethnographic, literary, poetic,
artistic, visual, performative, critical, multi-voiced, conversational, and co-constructed
representations. We are interested in ethnographic narratives that depict local sto-
ries; employ literary modes of scene setting, dialogue, character development, and
unfolding action; and include the author’s critical reflections on the research and
writing process, such as research ethics, alternative modes of inquiry and represen-
tation, reflexivity, and evocative storytelling. Proposals and manuscripts should be
directed to [email protected], [email protected], or ­[email protected].

Other volumes in this series include:

Transcribing Silence: Culture, Relationships and Communication

Kristine L. Muñoz

Bullied: Tales of Torment, Identity, and Youth

Keith Berry

Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories

Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis

Staring at the Park: A Poetic Autoethnographic Inquiry

Jane Speedy

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/

Writing-Lives-Ethnographic-Narratives/book-series/WLEN
SEARCHING FOR AN
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC
ETHIC

Stephen Andrew
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Stephen Andrew to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-62958-497-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-62958-498-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-39794-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsviii
A Cartographic Prelude x
Preface—Intentionality vs. Accidentalism xii

1 Introduction(s) and the Search for an Autoethnographic

Ethic1
An Autoethnographic Introduction 1
Autoethnography Introduced Through the Literature 4
Autoethnographic Ethics 6
Relational Ethics 8
Ethical Guidelines 11
Contextuality and Reflexivity in Ethics 14
The Ethics of Revelation and Healing 16
Dis-em-bodied Ethics 18
An Ethical Direction 19

2 Engaging the Literature 22

Three Key Ideas of Autoethnography 22
Aspect 1:The Ethics of Story Creation 22
Aspect 2:The Ethics of Storytelling 30
Aspect 3: Strengths and Limitations of the Researcher and the
Method 36
A Possible Way Forward 47
Intuitionism as a Philosophical Basis for Ethical
Autoethnography 48
vi Contents

3 The Grids: Three Worked Examples of Applying Ethical

Grids to Autoethnographic Text 52
An Introduction to the Grids 52
Ethical Eyes 53
Exposure Grid 53
Ideas and Duties Grid 54

4 Worked Example 1: “An Epistemology of Love” 55

Disclaimer 56
Autoethnographic Essay: “An Epistemology of Love” 57
Family of Origin Influences 57
The Influence of School 61
Kate 62
The Caucasian Chalk Circle 65
Act 2 67
Marriage and Divorce 69
Now 72
Codicil: An Alternate Story of a Life Without
Guardian Angels 75
Worked Example 1 —“An Epistemology of Love” 76
Ethical Eyes 77
Exposure Grid 77
Ideas and Duties Grid 79
Discussion of Grids 80

5 Worked Example 2: “Fire Reflections” 86

Autoethnographic Essay: “Fire Reflections” 87
18th March 2009 87
27th March 2009 89
2nd April 2009 91
10th April 2009 93
27th June 2009 96
Worked Example 2 —“Fire Reflections” 98
Ethical Eyes 98
Exposure Grid 98
Ideas and Duties Grid 99
Discussion of Grids 99

6 Worked Example 3: “What Happened?” 104

Autoethnographic Essay: “What Happened?” 104
What Happened 104
Blackberry Picking 107
 Contents vii

Nights in the Hospital Are Cruel and Endless 107

Messes With Love (This Stuff ) 108
Psychological Trauma 109
I Was Hit 110
The Person-Centred Hospital 110
Five Weeks Since the Accident 112
Crazy Heart 114
The Dark Morning Hour 116
He Has No Idea Who I Am 116
Victim Statement 117
Magistrates’ Court 118
Worked Example 3 — “What Happened?” 121
Ethical Eyes 121
Exposure Grid 121
Ideas and Duties Grid 122
Discussion of Grids 124

7 Making Sense in Retrospect 127

The Researcher at Risk 130
Implications for Psychotherapists,Teachers, Memoirists and Other
Writers 133
An Acceptable Approximate 135

Appendix138
Example of Marking Up a Text Prior to Processing Through the
Exposure Grid 138
An Epistemology of Love (Excerpt) 139
References141
Index155
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There is some trauma in the pages ahead. I could not have gotten thorough those
dark times without the love and care of the people who saw me, had faith in me
and looked out for me. I will name some of them here.
Thank you to the people who I call my guardian angels. These are the folks
who actively believe in me, especially when I struggle to do so. Special thanks to
John Davis for the love and joy he offered the world, and to Kate Donelan for
seeing me when I felt invisible.
To the wise and passionate staff of the Bachelor of Education (Counselling)
degree at La Trobe University, especially George Wills,Tony Williams,Warren Lett
and Lawrie Moloney. Special thanks to Lawrie for signing me up for the doctoral
degree and for his active support and encouragement as my boss while Head of
the Department of Counselling and Psychological Health.
To the hundreds of wonderful students who passed through the Graduate
Diploma in Counselling at La Trobe, thank you for what you taught me about
the human condition.
To Mum, for being there.
To Tenzin and Mika and Ruby for their love that has endured through trying
times.
To Melissa Monfries, Amaryll Perlesz and Jeff Young, my curious, encouraging
and insightful Research Progress Panel.
To Tutu for her razor sharp editing skills.
To Christopher Poulos and Suzanne Gannon for their heartfelt and generous
critique of the thesis behind this book.
To Carolyn Ellis for her endless enthusiasm for and promotion of my manu-
script, and to Mitch Allen who originally agreed to publish my ideas.
 Acknowledgements ix

To Dylan Ford and Hannah Shakespeare at Routledge who picked up and

continued the great work of Carolyn and Mitch.
To the ever-patient Jean Rumbold who was my principal supervisor for my
doctoral thesis. A grateful nod, also, to her husband and co-conspirator, Bruce
Rumbold.
And to Zoë for her bravery, piercing intellect, unfailing support, outrageous
laughter and a depth of love that I never believed was possible.
A CARTOGRAPHIC PRELUDE

Maps codify the miracle of existence.

—Nicolas Crane, 2002, p. xi

Alice asks, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
—Lewis Carroll, 1865/2015, p. 53

This book is a travelogue. It will illustrate and guide anyone who is looking to
create autoethnography, or life writing of any variety, in an ethical manner. This
is also a roadmap that has been fashioned out of my experience of seeking a way
to tell my story while at the same time being mindful of others who appear in and
around my tales. Out of my search, I want to show the reader the paths I traversed,
the dead ends I encountered and the ways through that have freed my words.
Along the way, I explored the academic literature around autoethnography
and found themes that coalesced as key ideas around the method. I read about the
philosophy of ethics and an orientation called intuitionism and sought to bring
together autoethnography and philosophical ethics in a practical fashion. Before,
during and after my academic questioning, I wrote stories about my life.
I wanted to know if what I had written was ethically sound. To do this I had
to disassemble what it might mean to be an autoethnographer and to seek out
what might be at the core of a phrase like ‘ethically sound’. As I gathered together
ideas from psychology, sociology, ethnography and philosophy, I realised it was
too difficult to hold all these concepts simultaneously. So I created a framework
 A Cartographic Prelude xi

around them and then fed pieces of my own life writing through this structure.
This framework became the two grids that are central to this book.
I enjoy intellectual theory, but am wary of ideas that float in their own space. It
is important, I believe, to ground concepts and methods in the everyday wherever
possible. With this in mind, I tested out the grids with the life writing I had been
doing. I believe that I have created a process which helped improve the ethical
quality of what I had written.
This book follows the trajectory of the explorations I have just listed. I weave
theory with autoethnographic reflections on these ideas, offer examples of long
form autoethnography that have been subject to the grids and reflect on the out-
comes of putting my life stories through what I believe is a unique re-viewing
process.
Overall, I hope to illuminate a pathway that draws from experience, observa-
tion, research and reflection, focuses on inherent ethical concerns and leads to a
point where the original material is filtered, clarified and polished. While ethics
sometimes has a ‘thou shalt not’ tone and reputation, I am hoping that what I have
created here will inspire imagination and publication, rather than a constriction
and silencing of your writing.
This book will help you take your life writing from its private, organic and
possibly accidental genesis to a considered and ethically sound point of public dis-
semination. I hope it will help you, in the terms used by Plato, to add the ‘good’
(or the ethics) to what is already ‘true’ and ‘beautiful’ in your writing.
PREFACE—INTENTIONALITY
VS. ACCIDENTALISM

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
—John Lennon, 1980

My introductions keep rewriting themselves. Every few weeks a new event steps
in and elbows away the old intro. Stories jostle and jump up and down, waving
their little hands, shouting, “Pick me! Pick me!”

It’s early 2013 and I am in a job interview for a counselling lecturer position.1
“So, tell me about yourself,” the interviewer instructs.
I push my resume toward her and say, by way of answering, “I was asked
to bring this in”. My resume grounds us both and reigns in the borderless
enormity of ‘tell me about yourself ’.
She scans the resume and asks a few questions. I answer well, I think,
relaxing into the process.
She spots the part of my resume where I mention my still-to-be-finished
Doctorate.
“Two thousand and five!?”
“Arr, yes. That’s when I enrolled.”
“You’re an incompetent, disorganised timewaster”, I hear her thinking
to herself. “Two thousand and five! For Christ’s sake! What on earth have
you been up to?”
I rush into her silence and attempt to rescue my projection.
“I’ve completed the coursework.”
That information is in front of her, I realise as I speak, so I go again.
“Some things have interfered with the process,” I eventually offer.
 Preface—Intentionality vs. Accidentalism xiii

She looks at me curiously.

“I was in a car crash and broke my neck in 2012. I separated from my
wife in 2011 and was denied regular contact with my kids. I went through
the bushfires in 2009 . . . ”
Her face appears to soften and she inquires about the fires. As we are
speaking, I hear myself protest silently that these things didn’t so much
derail my thesis as bring it into being. This was the materia mundi, grist for
the mill, the stuff of the world. Or, if you will, data. The events that frus-
trated my naive imaginings of a clean, linear and stepwise process towards
completion of my thesis turned out to be a vital core to the content of The
Big Essay. My thesis got written when I was pulled away from researching.
Kind of when I wasn’t looking.
This feels like a little revelation, and I am drawn to stay with the wonder-
ment of a self-composing thesis. But I bring myself back to the interview
and focus on her questions rather than on my methodological musings.
I find my groove again and soon we are talking about contracts and possible
start dates.
I get the job.

Like my thesis, this book has grown out of a number of winding, interlocking
and overflowing tributaries.
The first of these was my enrolment in a Doctorate of Clinical Science degree.
After I completed the course work component, I embarked on my thesis. This
was to be an exploration of the topic of polyamory, a relationship orientation
that suggests that maintaining loving and/or sexual relationships with more than
one person at a time can be valid and worthwhile (Haritaworn, Lin & Klesse,
2006, p. 518). Unlike affairs, which depend on secrecy, the central principal of
poly-amorous (many-love) relationships is an openness and free flow of intimate
information between all parties involved (see Barker, 2005; Barker & Langdridge,
2010; Easton & Hardy, 2011). For a long while, I got enjoyably lost in ideas, stories
and research methodology.
A second stream that fed the thesis was a series of interruptions to the research.
There included the mundane, ongoing callings of family, work and everyday life
and bigger life events that would place my slowly emerging thesis on hold for
months on end. I wrote about these big events (bushfires, car accident and divorce)
with no conscious purpose beyond the act of writing. These ‘accidental’ writings
became central to the finished thesis (see Poulos, 2008a, p. 123; 2010b, p. 50), and
they eventually overtook and superseded the original topic of polyamory.
The first of these events took place during this time of writing about poly-
amory. I lived in the town of St Andrews, 43 kilometres northeast of Melbourne,
Victoria, where during the summer of 2009, the worst bushfires in the state’s
history tore through our little town and ravaged 4,500 km2 of the surrounding
districts. One hundred and seventy-three lives were lost, and more than 2,000
xiv Preface—Intentionality vs. Accidentalism

houses razed.While I knew a number of the deceased, my family and friends were
not part of this list. My home was also spared.
On March 18, 2009, four years after I had enrolled, and five weeks after the
“Black Saturday” bushfires, I accidently started a new thesis.
I found myself with a desire to write, something, anything, as I sought to make
sense of life after the fires. I felt an organic need to write. This desire felt like, and
proved to be, a therapeutic response to what I had been through over a month
earlier. I wrote because I could, because I needed to and because I wanted to seek
out some meaning in my still-smoky, post-fire world. As I sat down and scribbled
on that warm March morning, I had no thought that these words would one
day form part of my thesis or a book on autoethnographic ethics. I just wrote.
For me.
That first vignette was later joined by nine other companion pieces, composed,
without plan, over the next four months. In the end, I had a constellation of tales
that sketched out what it was like for me and those around me to have experi-
enced the most dramatic natural disaster in this country’s recorded history.
Later that year, when facing the clashing realities of a compulsory presentation
at a university research festival and of having done very little work on my thesis,
I hit upon a germ of an idea and emailed a colleague.

From: Stephen Andrew

Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 5:22:54 PM
To: Zoë Krupka
Subject: The word
Hi Zoë,
When we were talking today about the research festival, I men-
tioned that I thought I’d present some of my fire reflections
writing, “if that could be considered research”. You said, “of
course it’s research”, before naming the type of research you
thought it was. Question: what was the label? I will write up
my abstract and add the magic word to the mix. (Only to impress
people, you understand . . .)
Cheers
Stephen

From: ZoëK
Sent: Tue 20/10/2009 5:59 PM
To: Stephen Andrew
Subject: Re: The word
I think it fits under the banner of reflexivity or reflexitive
learning. I’m just putting this stuff together myself, so God-
dess Google may help more here, but there’s whole journals about
it and stuff, so it must be dinkum.2
I hope you have what you need to spin gold.
xZo